wow, busy morning!

Yep, I actually do have a life outside of stamping...well, sort of! This morning was a BIG day at my house. My sister broke her leg in late Feb, and needed to have surgery to stablilize the fracture so she is "non-weight bearing" on that leg for a total of 8 weeks. Her home, in the Chicago area, has too many stairs to even consider staying there so she is staying with us while she recovers and was due to have some bloodwork done today. Thankfully the sun was shining, the weather was great AND today Starbucks had a coupon for a free pastry with purchase of any "fancy drink" so what better day to be out and about! So, we started out the morning with a Starbucks run (thank goodness for the drive thru window!) then over to the lab. Running by the lab to have some blood drawn isn't usually a big deal but when you're stuck in a wheelchair, it takes a little longer. Thank God for the kind people who stopped to help us open doors, etc. and a nice woman even helped me heave the wheelchair back into the car in the parking lot! Normally a trip like that would take 30 minutes or so but we were thrilled that we made it out and back in only 2 hours. Plenty of time to rest up and be ready for stamp club this afternoon and evening....and maybe cycle through a little laundry too!

A few weeks ago I may mentioned a beautiful card that I "cased" for my February stamp club. It was designed by a very talented SU demo and Stampin' UP! Artisan Award winner named Diana Gibbs and it was the perfect card to showcase the Abundant Life stamp set using the "faux ceiling tile" technique. Remember the "old fashioned" ceiling tiles you used to see in really old buildings? This technique reminds me of that!

And so, without further ado......check this out! Isn't it beautiful? And believe me, it is so much prettier in real life! I do confess that I took a few "shortcuts" when making this car. Diana shared a tutorial for this card on the Stampin' UP! demo only website where I discovered that she used silver embossing with multiple thicknesses of embossing to create the "tiles"...I cheated and just used the silver metallic cardstock. I'm sure that in person her card is far superior but in the photos it's hard to tell the difference and from a time management perspective, this shortcut is great!

So if you are wondering how I did this, here's the scoop! I stamped the daffodil image onto shimmery white cardstock (so pretty!) and watercolored it using reinkers and then watercolored a very faint tracing of Bashful blue around the actual image to give it some dimension/depth. Wow, what a difference that makes! I sponged some more blue around the outside edge of that layer then layered it onto Bashful Blue cardstock then another layer of Basic Black. Yes, I am the "layer queen" ordinarily...but apparently Diana Gibbs is also fond of layering?

Now for the "ceiling tile" part. Here's my shortcut...instead of creating my own metallic tiles with embossing powder, I used my 1-1/4th square punch and punched out 10 "squares" of silver cardstock then I ran them thru the Big Shot using the filigree embossing folder and voila! instant ceiling tiles! Then all I had to do was stick them down on a slightly larger layer of black cardstock. Since the center was covered I didn't bother putting any tiles in the middle. After that, one final layer of a full card of Bashful Blue with a stamped greeting inside. For the topmost layer, I tied some white satin ribbon around the bottom of the focal image and attached it to the "ceiling tiles" using Stampin' Dimensional. Consider how beautiful this looks, it wasn't a difficult card at all...thank you, Diana Gibbs!